


Kinetic Energy

by dancer4813



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst, Anxiety Attacks, Brotp, Disaster Gun Son, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode 66 Spoilers, Episode 67 Spoilers, Friendship, Give Vox Machina a Break, Hurt/Comfort, Kiki Needs a Hug, Male-Female Friendship, No Spoilers for Episode 68, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Set During Episode 67 - "The Chase to Glintshore", Tal'dorei Campaign, percy needs a hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-23
Updated: 2016-09-23
Packaged: 2018-08-16 19:19:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8114353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancer4813/pseuds/dancer4813
Summary: His fingers sought out hers and he felt both of her hands, warm and gentle, neither missing, neither scarred by working with hot metals nor from making bullets. They were calloused, yes, but from pulling up weeds in her garden and sweeping a rake through many years’ worth of autumn leaves.“Are you alright?” He asked, looking up at her.“I really think I should be asking you that question…”--Percy is Disaster Gun Son. Kiki is best friend and basically big sister. They both need some hugs.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was written in response to @trinketchu on tumblr saying "Alright someone write me a Percy cuddle hurt/comfort fic pls. Pls I need it."
> 
> It took me a week to finish, and ended up being 2/3 Percy angst, 1/3 Keyleth angst, but I'm happy with it. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

When the sun had set below the distant horizon, Percy made his way below-decks on Captain Damien’s airship, his mind crowded and his heart heavy. His talk in the Debt’s Respite with Vax, Vex, and Keyleth had made his emotions clearer, more manageable, in that moment, but now they were on their way to confront one of the sources of countless nightmares and Percy feared he was losing himself yet again.

Finding one of the empty quarters set aside for them, Percy lit a lamp and took out some small gears that he always carried in his things. He fiddled with them, the movement of his hands allowing his brain to disconnect for a few blessed minutes as he arranged them in new ways on spindles, allowing them to spin different directions and create swirls of silver and gold in his vision. The trick was fitting them into positions where all would be able to spin freely and not get caught up in other gears or try to spin two directions at once.

But then his hand slipped and the gears scattered and clattered to the floor, and Percy felt his hands begin to shake more, a heaviness filling his chest as he rose from his chair to get the gears that had fallen. He bent down to pick some up, trying to push past the anxiety – there was no danger, they were in the sky, Ripley didn’t know where they were at the moment – but a flicker of shadow from the lamp made him start and fall backward.

Visions came to Percy’s mind of curling black smoke and he could have sworn he heard explosions of black powder and ricochets of bullets inside the small cabin. He wanted to jump to his feet and check to make sure his friends were safe, but his throat felt constricted and the air felt harder and harder to breathe with each passing moment. Instead Percy pulled his knees into his chest, making himself as small a target as possible, and tried to even out his breathing as he felt old scars burn with memories he tried to push aside.

But old memories felt like cloth soaking up their more recent counterparts and Percy heard more bangs, and then a voice calling his name over and over, almost teasing in their approach.

“Percy! I know you’re down here!” the voice shouted, strangely familiar and _not_ helping him calm down in the slightest.

"Percy! Come and join us – we’re having fun upstairs, and I know you’d love it!”

“Percy!”

The same voice, getting closer and closer, the bangs getting louder as it did, Percy’s breaths getting shorter as he felt his chest close up and he forced himself to take in oxygen.

“Go away,” he muttered, talking helping his breathing even out so very slightly. “Leave us alone – you’ve caused enough damage as it is.”

“Percy, where are you?”

“Percy!”

“Percy?”

“Percy, are you alright?”

The human’s breath caught and he felt like he was choking on air. He didn’t want to open his eyes and see a face that had taunted his dreams for years and he gripped his forearms tighter, noting only that the voice had stopped calling for him, that the bangs had ceased.

Percy waited for the shot through his head, unless Ripley was there to take him hostage again, to torture him or worse – to force him watch to watch as she tortured his friends, his family. He didn’t dare move as she stood above him, in absolute power. He was helpless without an opening to draw Retort, or to lay a hand on his sword.

A hand touched his arm and Percy flinched violently away, smacking his opposite shoulder on the desk, yelping in pain as he did so.

Then two hands grabbed his shoulders, restraining him just enough to keep him from moving side-to-side, and Percy could’ve sworn he felt his heart stop, his lungs stop, his brain cease to think. Percy felt like he was falling and there was nothing he could do, nothing he could say-

“Percy, it’s just Keyleth. It’s me.”

A calm, light voice murmured the words in his ear, the hands on his shoulders moving gently back and forth. Something was wrong but he didn’t know exactly what, besides the fact that Ripley was pretending to be his friend.

He forced his tense lungs to squeeze in another breath, and gritted out a single sentence through clenched teeth.

“Stop pretending.”

There was a startled pause that stopped the hands on his shoulders from moving.

“Percy, it’s just Keyleth. Open your eyes.”

He found the strength to draw another breath, the anger overtaking his anxiety, the rage burning a bright and firey blue, like the heat of an intense flame.

“I will not look at you knowing you wear the face of a friend.”

“But- I don’t- it’s _me_ , Percy!”

“And that’s what you’d say if you were dressed-up like them, Anna. Fool me once…”

“Percy, I’m not-“

He swung at her with a fist and hit her left arm hard enough to fling off the hand holding him.

“You can’t fool me! I know- I know who-“

“Percy!” the woman before him exclaimed, her voice high and shrill, a distinct pain in her voice.  

It was enough to make him pause, the weakness unusual. Ripley wasn’t an outstanding actress. Passable, yes, but that exclamation had been so _Keyleth_ …

He opened his eyes, then shut them again at the sight of the druid. Or, at least, her face.

“H-how c-can I know it’s you?” he stuttered, once again trying to focus on his breathing. His vision swam for a moment, but his anger still burnt like fire, and he could tell the proverbial pin was about to drop, depending on how she responded. He kept his gaze focused on the woman before

“Percy-“ she cut herself off, and took a deep breath, the fingers hovering gently over his arms, not quite touching them. “Percy, count how many hands I have.”

The request startled him for a moment, but as she lowered her fingers to rest on his forearms and Percy did a quick inventory of what he could feel, what he could sense, and he understood. The tension drained out of him in mere moments, leaving his brain clearer, but his hands just as shaky as they had been.

His fingers sought out hers and he felt both of her hands, warm and gentle, neither missing, neither scarred by working with hot metals nor from making bullets. They were calloused, yes, but from pulling up weeds in her garden and sweeping a rake through many years’ worth of autumn leaves.

Percy found himself able to suck in a deep breath of air and smelled not the pungent, metallic smell of gunfire, but the light scent of flowers and oncoming rain that he associated with Keyleth.

He sighed, his heart still beating fast from adrenaline, and dropped his head into his hands, clutching at his hair. Keyleth’s fingers fell from where he had held them and Percy winced as he remembered his reaction to her touch.

“I am so sorry,” he said, the pain at pulling his hair grounding him in the moment. “So sorry, Keyleth, that you had to see that. That I hit you, that I couldn’t-“

“Percy.”

She cut off his ramble with a single word, much like Pike did for Grog when he was worked up about something, and she moved to his side, tentatively wrapping an arm around his shoulders. She didn’t sound angry or frustrated, though she had every right to be, and Percy shuddered for a moment at the contact, feeling like he needed to run.

“It’s alright,” she continued once she had settled down beside him, her head leaning against his shoulder. He didn’t dare move, his hands still pulling at his hair, his shoulders tense, but she continued on anyway.

“It’s nothing I haven’t seen before, you know,” Keyleth said. “From you, from the twins, from Pike – we all have our own demons.”

“That we do,” Percy replied, consciously letting himself relax under her touch. She pulled him closer and he reluctantly let himself be supported by her, trying not to pull away. Keyleth was always prone to hugs, but this was extreme even for her. “Are you alright?”

“I really think I should be asking you that question…”

“You can ask me after you’ve given me an answer,” Percy offered, earning himself a sigh from Keyleth.

“I’m just worried about what’s going to happen tomorrow,” Keyleth said after a brief pause. “If Ripley will have found Glintshore or possibly Whisper by then, and how we’re going to fight against other Vestiges. I mean, somehow she got to Cabal’s Ruin so quickly…”

She sighed and laid her head on top of his where it rested on her shoulder, and Percy understood her sentiment exactly. Yes, they needed to get the other Vestiges, yes, they were trying to save the world, and then along came fucking Anna Ripley with her own agenda that apparently _didn’t_ spare a thought for the fact that dragons had taken over half the known world.        

“She just can’t leave me alone,” Percy said, bringing his right hand, still shaking slightly, to his forehead. He rubbed the bridge of his nose, shifting his glasses as he did so, a wave of exhaustion sweeping over him as he readjusted them.

“At least she’d not listening in on us anymore,” Keyleth pointed out, tightening her arm around his shoulders slightly. “She can’t hear every word we’re saying.”

“But she heard enough,” Percy said, clenching his hands into fists. “Anna heard too much, more than we want anyone else to know. She knows about all the Vestiges, about Kamaljiori the Sphinx, about J’mon Sa Ord, for gods’ sakes. She knows about Whitestone, about Gilmore, about the barrier, and so much more.”

Keyleth hummed in affirmation, and he felt the hand on his shoulder tighten to an almost vice-like grip. This was their reality. They couldn’t afford to ignore the fact that Ripley knew more than Vox Machina had told some of their closest friends – she knew their secrets, and she knew _his_ secrets, and that was terrifying. They didn’t have time to spare, they were in a race to the finish, and Percy could only hope they didn’t burn themselves out before they hit the home stretch.

“Those aren’t memories we can take away, either,” Percy thought aloud, his thoughts returning to solely Ripley as nerves took over this mind. “Not unless we held her captive for days on end while Scanlan went back and modified ten minutes of her memory each day.”

“She knows about Whitestone,” Keyleth echoed, and a weight dropped in Percy’s stomach.

“Yes,” he muttered, trying not to think about all the ways that would be able to go wrong. “Yes. She knows _everything_.”

Ripley had taken so much from him. He didn’t even want to tempt the universe by asking what else she would take.

“Do you want to check up on them?”

Percy was thrown by the question, and had to spend a good ten seconds puzzling out the meaning and his possible response.

“Are you saying you could scry into the city?” he asked, still confused. “I thought the magical barrier prevented that from happening.”

“I helped Gilmore with some of the magic while we were there, after visiting Draconia,” Keyleth murmured. “I asked him if there was some way I could get my gaze in, and he offered the option… I was worried about everyone there, that we might come back and find Kima or Allura, Zahra or Gilmore or Pike- like Tiberius-”

Her voice caught and Percy carefully extricated himself from under her arm, reversing their positions as tears fell from her eyes. She wasn’t sobbing, but tears fell steadily down her cheeks, dampening the front of his coat.

“Gilmore helped me incorporate my magic into the barrier,” Keyleth continued, shifting so she was, presumably, more comfortable, and though it meant she was practically sitting in Percy’s lap, Percy couldn’t bring himself to mind. “It wasn’t much – I only helped him for a short while, but it was enough. I think, anyway. I haven’t tried it yet- I haven’t _needed_ to try it, but with everything going on…”

She sighed, sniffed, and rubbed her eyes with the heel of one hand.

Percy rubbed her shoulder awkwardly, resting his chin on top of her hair, and was vaguely grateful Keyleth had taken off her antlered circlet before coming below deck. They sat in silence until Keyleth pulled away, blinking quickly.

“Sorry,” she muttered, wiping away the tears from her cheeks.

Percy felt a smile crawl onto his face. “I did grow up with six siblings, Keyleth,” he reminded her, and he was rewarded with a chuckle. “I’ve seen my fair share of tears and shed a good number myself. A damp spot on my jacket is nothing.”

She mumbled in understanding, and he chuckled mirthlessly, another thought coming to his mind. “Tears are nothing compared to blood and gore, especially. And we’ve seen plenty of that.”

“More than our fair share,” Keyleth agreed, nodding. Her eyes were mostly dry, if still a bit pink, but her voice was steady. She paused, as if trying to figure out what to say, then took a deep breath and looked back up at him.

“Would you like to see your sister?”

Her green eyes were intense and bright, and Percy remembered that moment he had learned Cassandra was still alive, when Keyleth had pointed out that he had a sister. The sudden lightness that had flared in him, a balm amidst the fright and horror of the Briarwoods’ tyranny, was echoed in such a similar situation.

“I would, Keyleth,” he murmured, reaching out to grab her hand. “I really would.”

               

 

**Author's Note:**

> I was going to add more, but the fic kind of rounded itself off nicely, so I'm going to leave it there. 
> 
> But, headcanoning after this particular fic, we're going to assume that Keyleth, being the all-powerful, badass Druid she is, can let someone else peek in on her scrying spell (at least, if she really takes the time to focus). So, after Percy and Keyleth see Cassandra having breakfast with Allura and Kima, freshly returned from their scouting adventures and talking about light and happy things, Keyleth drags Percy back up on deck of Captain Damon's ship and they stargaze with the rest of Vox Machina, then fall asleep in a large cuddle pile. 
> 
> Slight AU, but it doesn't affect anything and Percy needs all the hugs/cuddles he can get.
> 
> Thank you for reading, and let me know what you thought! *less than three*
> 
> To see my ideas/theories, ramblings, and so much more, check out my tumblr: [dancerwrites](http://www.dancerwrites.tumblr.com)


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